TiVo's recent purchase of a small company called Strangeberry has had the rumor mongers speculating for the past few weeks. While little hard information seems to be available, Om Malik appears to be getting close to the real story.
Hmm. I like the digital hub idea. I use RF to distribute my TiVo's output around the house. But that's so 1950's as a distribution medium. With fast, cheap networking and tiny, cheap decoders, it makes more sense to distribute via IP. The connection to PC allows TiVo to take advantage of both private networks (e.g. DIRECTV) and the public internet.
Apparently the Strangeberry software (these are ex Marimba guys, for what that's worth) uses some sort of in house java implementation of zero-conf (what Apple calls rendezvous.) I hope that's the case because I really want that tech to take off as a standard. My limited experience shows it to be very easy to use (literally zero configuration,) and quite open. (For instance, if I open my iTunes jukebox it automatically finds all other music on my subnet and displays it as different playlists in my jukebox - I don't have to set anything.) Getting the digital hub is a big win, but getting an *open* digital hub where third party manufacturers can join the party would be even bigger.
What kind of bandwidth do you need for (non HD) TV? Can you do this wirelessly with 802.11g? And what about HD? Am I right in thinking it will be a long time before we have that sort of wireless bandwidth in home networks?
What kind of bandwidth do you need for (non HD) TV?
Depends. How many bits are in a JPEG picture?
Resolution, "difficulty" (e.g basketball vs. talking heads), quality of the source, desired visual quality of the output all play into the equation.
Typical DVDs run between 4 and 10 Mbps. Satellite TV will typically have an average bit rate of 2.5 Mbps, but may have peak bit rates in the 6-8 Mbps.
802.11b running at full tilt is plenty for one channel of SD video under almost any circumstance. And it could offer multiple channels, with compromised, but still decent quality.
802.11g eliminates the bottleneck, even for wireless HD.
HD transmissions today are mostly in the 12-15 Mbps range. Although, if the bandwidth were available, more could be used for difficult video sequences.
H.264 (standard that's only a few months old) will reduce bandwidth requirements for HD and SD by a factor of 2-4. But MPEG-2 will linger for quite a while. Why hell, people still press vinyl after all these years.
On last comment. The "open" approach is very interesting. Video is a huge application, and there's a lot of innovation out there in digital video technology.
Off topic, but in the movie theatres they're running commercials where low paid film biz technicians complain about internet film piracy. In one I saw, the guy says "You could steal a candy bar from the store, downoad a movie off the internet..." I hate the way the film industry is trying to make the downloader, not the mass seller of copied materials, into the socially unacceptable criminal type. [end rant]
Kastjes onder de radar
Tivo Series 2 is interesting. They've got an ethernet interface on the unit. It can connect to a computer for photo gallery and slide show functions, and can tap into the your MP3 library. Also it can be configured over the internet if you forget to tell it to record something. And content on one Tivo Series 2 unit can be played back on a different Tivo Series 2 on the lan.
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- jim 2-03-2004 7:55 pm
Hmm. I like the digital hub idea. I use RF to distribute my TiVo's output around the house. But that's so 1950's as a distribution medium. With fast, cheap networking and tiny, cheap decoders, it makes more sense to distribute via IP. The connection to PC allows TiVo to take advantage of both private networks (e.g. DIRECTV) and the public internet.
- mark 2-03-2004 8:52 pm
Apparently the Strangeberry software (these are ex Marimba guys, for what that's worth) uses some sort of in house java implementation of zero-conf (what Apple calls rendezvous.) I hope that's the case because I really want that tech to take off as a standard. My limited experience shows it to be very easy to use (literally zero configuration,) and quite open. (For instance, if I open my iTunes jukebox it automatically finds all other music on my subnet and displays it as different playlists in my jukebox - I don't have to set anything.) Getting the digital hub is a big win, but getting an *open* digital hub where third party manufacturers can join the party would be even bigger.
What kind of bandwidth do you need for (non HD) TV? Can you do this wirelessly with 802.11g? And what about HD? Am I right in thinking it will be a long time before we have that sort of wireless bandwidth in home networks?
- jim 2-03-2004 9:05 pm
What kind of bandwidth do you need for (non HD) TV?
Depends. How many bits are in a JPEG picture?
Resolution, "difficulty" (e.g basketball vs. talking heads), quality of the source, desired visual quality of the output all play into the equation.
Typical DVDs run between 4 and 10 Mbps. Satellite TV will typically have an average bit rate of 2.5 Mbps, but may have peak bit rates in the 6-8 Mbps.
802.11b running at full tilt is plenty for one channel of SD video under almost any circumstance. And it could offer multiple channels, with compromised, but still decent quality.
802.11g eliminates the bottleneck, even for wireless HD.
- mark 2-03-2004 9:28 pm
HD transmissions today are mostly in the 12-15 Mbps range. Although, if the bandwidth were available, more could be used for difficult video sequences.
H.264 (standard that's only a few months old) will reduce bandwidth requirements for HD and SD by a factor of 2-4. But MPEG-2 will linger for quite a while. Why hell, people still press vinyl after all these years.
- mark 2-03-2004 9:45 pm
On last comment. The "open" approach is very interesting. Video is a huge application, and there's a lot of innovation out there in digital video technology.
- mark 2-03-2004 9:56 pm
Off topic, but in the movie theatres they're running commercials where low paid film biz technicians complain about internet film piracy. In one I saw, the guy says "You could steal a candy bar from the store, downoad a movie off the internet..." I hate the way the film industry is trying to make the downloader, not the mass seller of copied materials, into the socially unacceptable criminal type. [end rant]
- tom moody 2-03-2004 10:04 pm
Kastjes onder de radar
- mark 2-03-2004 10:52 pm
Tivo Series 2 is interesting. They've got an ethernet interface on the unit. It can connect to a computer for photo gallery and slide show functions, and can tap into the your MP3 library. Also it can be configured over the internet if you forget to tell it to record something. And content on one Tivo Series 2 unit can be played back on a different Tivo Series 2 on the lan.
- mark 2-05-2004 12:36 pm